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The June issue of Writing Magazine is out. Peter James is on the cover and interviewed inside talking about making crime pay. Discover “Why I’ll never write for the Daily Mail”. Julie Cohen discusses My Writing Day and there is advice from non-fiction agent Andrew Lownie, pieces on becoming a columnist, a home and garden writer and much more. Everything from handling controversial topics and moral ambiguity in fiction to help with online marketing from social media expert Rebecca Woodhead. Beat the Bestsellers looks back at Kenneth Grahame and regular features include Grumpy Old Bookman and From Script to Screen. And as usual I’m in there with assorted news and publishing opportunities.

Ian Hocking has kindly sent me ebooks of the first two titles in his Saskia Brandt Series, Déjà Vu and Flashback. Set a decade from now these are extremely fast-paced science fiction action thrillers involving advanced computer technology, virtual reality and time travel. As the blurb says, scientist David Proctor is running for his life. On his trail is Saskia Brandt, a detective with the European FIB. She has questions. Questions about a bomb that exploded back in 2003. But someone is hunting her too. The clues are in the shattered memories of her previous life.

Flashback further complicates matters. In 1947 a Santiago-bound plane crashes into the Andes minutes after confirming its landing time. In 2003 a passenger plane nosedives into the Bavarian National Forest during a routine flight. Although separated by more than 50 years, these tragedies are linked by seven letters: S, T, E, N, D, E, C.

Both books, written in a sometimes dense, staccato, English, are highly imaginative but I found them too breathless and densely plotted, offering little time for reflection or involvement. I suspect the author had an eye on TV, and if you like J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Fringe) and would like a UK version (perhaps Bugs with harder SF and more pace) here it is. Both titles have proved highly popular with readers on Amazon and if the customer comments are anything to go by you may enjoy these more than I did. Don’t just take my word. No less than Ken MacLeod described Déjà Vu as ‘A crisply-written, fast-paced thriller that makes assured use of cutting-edge science fiction ideas’.

I have recently reread Iain M. Banks 1988 novel The Player of Games. I did so because I have been selected as a World Book Night book giver, and of the 25 available titles the one I chose to give away was the Banks. I had a hard time picking, and I want to explain why I selected this particular book.

But first, if you don’t know about World Book Night take a look here. And here is a list of the 25 books featured in 2012 (if you are in the US there is a different list of 30 titles). When you apply to become a World Book Night book giver you pick three titles in order of preference. I was fortunate to get my first choice.

So on Monday I will be giving away 24 copies of The Player of Games. Iain Banks has long been one of my favourite writers and The Player of Games is one of my favourite of his many novels. But there is more to it than that.

Iain Banks does something so vital that, as cliché has it, if he didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Banks is writing proof that the genre / literature divide is a nonsense. A figment of our imaginations.

There is only one type of book worth reading – a good book. Following up on the theme of this post, I believe that discriminating against books on the grounds of their subject matter is, well, exactly that, discrimination – the literary equivalent of racism or sexism. There are good books, bad books, great books, execrable books. The genre of any particular book says nothing about its quality. Genre is irrelevant. A literary red herring. What matters is how good the book is, not what it is about. A great writer can write a great book about anything. A poor writer will never write anything worth reading, no matter what they write about.

Banks is a casual iconoclast. He writes in different genres, and just gets on with it. Some write under different names in different genres or for different perceived audiences. Ruth Rendell is also Barbara Vine. Banks adopts a pen name only in the most obvious way, inserting the initial M. into his name when he writes – shock, horror, whisper it – science fiction.

Why should this be shocking? Lots of people write science fiction. But Banks was different. He started as a darling of the broadsheet intelligentsia, making his name as a ‘literary’ author with his controversial début The Wasp Factory (1984). He was immediately taken seriously by the literary establishment, which would not have happened had he made his début with one of the science fiction novels he had already written but failed to have accepted by a publisher.

Rather than follow with more of the same, Banks next novel was the surreal Walking on Glass. Then came The Bridge, a book which spanned the gulf between the mainstream and the fantastique. All three were published as contemporary literature, far from the taint of genre. In paperback they sported elegant black and white covers. Banks was a respectable brand.

Then Banks went and surprised almost everyone. In 1987, instead of publishing his next novel Banks published two. As a statement of intent this could not have been more clear, more brilliant. Espedair Street, published with a monochrome cover to match the previous three novels, was his most mainstream work to date. It had none of the macabre elements of The Wasp Factory, none of the uncanny features of Walking on Glass or The Bridge. It was contemporary realistic literature.

Had Banks continued purely in this direction he would doubtless sooner or later have won major literary prizes. Except, he didn’t.

Banks other new book for 1987 was Consider Phlebas. Taunting the critics, it had a big red spaceship on the cover and, for anyone who didn’t get the point, under the title the proud words, ‘A Science Fiction Novel’.

No hiding or denying the genre or pretending it was something else. Consider Phlebas was not just unashamedly science fiction. It was space opera. The enfant terrible of Scottish fiction had done the unthinkable. He had written Star Wars. For adults.

Crafted with the same wit, feeling, imagination and intelligence, Espedair Street and Consider Phelebas were pure Banks. One had spaceships, one rock ‘n’ roll.

For the last quarter century Banks has continued in much the same way, publishing a new book roughly once a year, alternating; black and white, colour, black and white, colour…

Except sometimes Banks mixes it up. Published as one of his mainstream novels, Transition was pure science fiction, though of a different character to his regular SF. Where Banks books with the colour covers tend to far future space opera, sometimes involving a society called ‘The Culture’, Transition is a parallel world novel unfolding on present day earths. Meanwhile Banks other novels have ranged from family drama (The Crow Road), to thriller (Complicity) to offbeat drama (Whit, The Business). Some are better than others, but anyone who only reads half of Banks output is missing all the point.

The best Iain (M.) Banks books are brilliant. They are wonderfully written, filled with memorable characters, ingeniously plotted, exciting, moving, funny, shocking and brimming with barbed insights. This doesn’t just apply to the SF novels, but to the mainstream novels as well. Of course it does. The same person wrote them all.

The Player of Games happens to be one of Banks best SF titles. For World Book Night I would have been as happy to be giving people the thrill of discovering The Crow Road or The Bridge, or almost any of Banks other works. Great writing is great writing. Whatever the colour of the cover.

An interesting piece by Amanda Craig has appeared on the Telegraph website. The article, centered around the HBO television series of George R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones novels, joins the vast pile of opinion pieces addressing the debate ‘can fantasy fiction ever be any good’. Which is to say, should authors use their imagination or confine themselves to looking out the window and typing?

These opinion pieces begin by stating the default premise, that fantasy fiction is beneath the consideration of the likely reader of the article. There is an implicit flattery – we’re too smart for this and we know it. Craig, however, is playing devil’s advocate, ‘How can yet another fantasy involving men with swords and bad hair, soft-porn style sex scenes and dragons possibly be acceptable to anyone over 14?’ (yet another? – the TV channels aren’t exactly flooded).

Such articles go on to laud a new (or new to the writer) example of fantasy, or horror, or science fiction that isn’t terrible. The author always writes as if finding a good example of genre fiction is an astonishing surprise, even though these articles are themselves part of a prolific chattering class subgenre – a continually required corrective to years of pride and prejudice.

As Craig says, having outlined a few plot elements of A Game of Thrones, ‘It may sound like Jacobean drama – and in fact, the scheming brother is played by Harry Lloyd, currently starring as the brother of the Duchess of Malfi in the Old Vic – but this is not what is generally understood as high culture.’

But…she continues… ‘over the past six months, HBO’s serialisation of Game of Thrones has become the literary world’s guilty secret.’

Describing A Game of Thrones as the literary world’s guilty secret is very revealing. The implication is, it’s good, but how can we admit it? We no longer discriminate by sex or race or religion. Today we keep our prejudices to the type of fiction we read and watch.

Craig continues, ‘I got onto it after John Lanchester, the distinguished novelist, told me he’d just finished watching it for the second time, and was feeling “bereft”, adding, “I think George R Martin is a seriously good writer who doesn’t get his literary due, entirely because he writes fantasy, which is somehow, to people who don’t read it, inherently ridiculous.”’

Here is the heart of the matter, ‘It takes real intellectual confidence to admit that fantasy at its best can be an art, because for much of the past century, it has been associated with escapist drivel. Hostility to The Lord of the Rings has been the default setting for generations of Oxford English graduates, still obliged to this day to study Beowulf thanks to Professor Tolkien.’

Does it take real intellectual confidence to stand up to a the pride and prejudices of a gang of intellectual bullies? Or does it take honesty; the honesty not to deny that which one knows is good? To ignore the bullies (default settings are meant to be changed) who run the literary establishment, the out-of-touch clique who have decided what is fit and proper to read, what should be scorned. The same bullies who sometimes laud writers for standing up to tyranny, for satirising and exposing the cruelties of power, then abuse their own power by attacking other writers for penning the wrong type of fiction. Bullies, bluff called, roll over and leave their victims alone. Sometimes, frightened children at heart, they overcome their fears and grow-up.

All fiction is ‘made up’. It is ‘imagined’. All fiction is fantasy. Once that is accepted then all forms of fiction have to be considered as sub-genres of fantasy. Literary fiction, the only sort of fiction allowed recognition by Craig’s Oxford English graduate Mafia, becomes one subgenre among many. It is the subgenre the rule of which is that fiction should strive to produce a facsimile of the real world. That’s all. Literary fiction doesn’t have a preordained, God-given right to consider itself superior to other genres which follow different precepts. There is not one genre to rule them all.

The prejudice against genre fiction makes it easy for academics and critics to dismiss whole swathes of writing without ever having to consider it. A useful escape in a world filled with far more fiction than anyone could read. It meanwhile permits acceptance of anything literary taste-makers may like – it’s not really fantasy (or science fiction, or horror, or crime or romance), it can’t be, it’s good. This intellectual bigotry makes it possible to have it both ways. It justifies remaining lazily ignorant of vast areas of literature and art, while cherry-picking individual titles and boasting of discovering a pearls crafted for swine.

Craig, who is not one of these bigots, writes, ‘I myself enjoy good fantasy literature and film, but my husband and daughter find it intellectually repulsive: yet over the Easter Bank Holiday, we all became equally desperate to find out what happens next.’

As her husband and daughter may have learnt, the truth is not; ‘literary fiction good, genre fiction bad’, but that all fiction is fantasy, some good, some bad, some great, some execrable.

And that is a challenge to cast aside literary pride and prejudice and read a wider range of fiction. Great fiction. Whatever the genre.

With several of the biggest names in UK Science Fiction speaking, this free event looks unmissable for anyone seriously interested in the science in fiction. Here’s a press release from the University of Manchester:

“Putting the Science in Fiction” Interfaculty Symposium on Science and Entertainment will be an interdisciplinary workshop at the University of Manchester on Wednesday 25th April, from 9:30AM to 5PM in Zochonis TH A (B5), organised by Geoff Ryman (EAS/Centre for New Writing) and David Kirby (CHSTM).

Many people look suspiciously at science in fictional media and may ask themselves: Why don’t the creators of fiction ever talk to real scientists? In fact, those who write novels, produce television shows, and create movies do speak with scientists on a regular basis. This workshop explores how science provides challenges and opportunities for the creators of fiction. By bringing together leading entertainment professionals, novelists, communication scholars, and scientists the workshop will forge new relationships between the scientific community and the arts/entertainment community. One goal of the workshop is to begin discussions about creating a “Science and Entertainment” collaboration programme in the UK equivalent to the Science and Entertainment Exchange run by the National Academy of Sciences in the US.

Confirmed speakers include:
* Stephen Baxter, author of the Manifold trilogy and the Xeelee Sequence
* Ken MacLeod, University of Edinburgh, scholar and author of the Fall Revolution series and the Engines of Light trilogy
* Alastair Reynolds, scientist and author of the Revelation Space series, Pushing Ice and House of Suns
* Geoff Ryman, University of Manchester, scholar and author of Air, The Children’s Garden, and The King’s Last Song
* Ra Page, Founder & Editorial Manager of Comma Press
* David A. Kirby, University of Manchester, author of Lab Coats in Hollywood
* Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, University of Oxford, author of Science on Stage
* Phil Manning, University of Manchester, paleontologist, Science Consultant for Bizarre Dinosaurs and Fossil Detectives
* Justina Robson, author of Silver Screen, Natural History and the Quantum Gravity series
* Simon Ings, author and editor of New Scientist‘s fiction magazine Arc
* Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester, Professor of Zoology
* Tim O’Brien, Jodrell Bank, Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics

“Putting the Science in Fiction” is sponsored by the University of Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, Faculty of Life Sciences, and Centre for New Writing.

There is no cost for the workshop, but spaces are limited so you will need to book a place by contacting scienceinfiction [dot] manchester [at] gmail [dot] com

The April issue of Writing Magazine is out. Cathy Kelly is on the cover and interviewed inside talking about her latest book, The House on Willow Street. Eve White discusses her hectic life of a successful agent, and medieval thriller writer Karen Maitland shares her writing routine. There’s a profile of new crime writer Claire McGowan, a report on Faber Academy’s short fiction boot camp, notes on crime writing research, advice on creating an author website, guidance on getting the best from an interview and features on social networking and ebook self-publishing. More besides, including the regular columns, Fiona Harper on how she got published, Grumpy Old Bookman Michael Allen, author and social media expert Rebecca Woodhead, and my usual market reports and news roundups in Writers’ News.

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Gary Dalkin is an editor and independent writing consultant with three decades experience in print and online publishing. He contributes every month to Writing Magazine and has been published by Amazon, BBC Publications, Gramophone, HMV, Interzone, the London Symphony Orchestra, SFX and many more.